


Of Time and Dying

by SilverDagger



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Backstory, Drabble, Gen, Minor Character(s), gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1559135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madeline has always been a dreamer, but the world is not always kind to dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Time and Dying

Madeline, autumn-born, has always loved autumn best.

The others in town call her Mad, and it's half her name and half her nature – mad Madeline, the kind of queer, uncanny girl who dreams without knowing what she's dreaming of. Her mother plucks burrs and branches from her hair, mutters over torn stockings and unattended chores, tells her over and again to be more careful.

She wants to be careful. She tries. But there's always a deer trail or an overgrown orchard, and she always returns with wild roses in her hands, stories in her head, dreaming through another year's dying.

*

Madeline is no child now, and soldiers occupy the streets. Their boots outside the window each night are heavy as earth and iron, reminding her of the world as is.

 _Keep your head down_ , her mother says. _Mind yourself, and no harm will come to you._ And she knows, from her time in the woods, how to slip from foreground into background, simply fade. But mad Madeline is sane enough to know that a moth's camouflage, a sparrow's dun wings – these things exist for a reason, and she knows that _no harm_ is a lie.

Outside her window, frost gathers.

*

Another year passes, and the soldiers do not leave. They've settled in, made themselves familiar, and life bends around their presence. Madeline can feel their eyes on her as she hurries along empty streets, carrying bread and bolts of fabric.

She dreams of ice on the wind and the year turning towards darkness, on nights when the other world lies close, pressed up against the skin of this one. She thinks of soldiers in the streets, and wants to be elsewhere.

The window latch is cold in her hand.

_Be careful._

Mad Madeline slips through the window, and is gone.

*


End file.
